First, the SEA sent a few Onion employees bogus email from a bogus address. Appearing to come from Elizabeth Mpyisi (mpyisi@unhcr.org), it emailed Onion employees with an awkward message and a link that seemed to point to a Washington Post article about The Onion:

Then, the scheme was on. Now that SEA had an employee's email, it sent out that exact same message to other Onion employees—this time appearing to come from a coworker. A few more fell for it, and one of those had credentials to The Onion's Twitter and Facebook accounts.

"It's seems that they lost their minds after the hack," a member of the SEA told the Daily Dot. The hackers retaliated with lulz, tweeting screengrabs of emails it sent from a compromised account to fellow Onion email addresses, spoofing advice on how to avoid future hacks.

"Limit site traffic to about twenty or thirty visitors per month," read one. "Call your congressman and have them pressure President Obama to intervene in Syria," went another.

Eventually, the Onion reset every single employee's Google password and regained control of their social media arms.